The Sierra Nevada Mountains on the Pacific coast of North America and the Andes on the coast of South America were cited. Wegener also suggested that India drifted northward into the Asian continent thus forming the Himalayas. Many other scientist provided evidence toward this theory of a “continental jigsaw”, this evidence included geological matches in the rock type on two different continents coastlines found thousands of miles away e.g. Scotland and Canada and South America and Africa. Fossil evidence was also provided; trilobites of the same species found in Canada and Scotland and also, coal deposits were located in Antarctica.
Even though the coastlines didn’t match perfectly (maybe due to erosion/weathering), he later found that the continental shelves matched more closely which matched the theory that those continents were once together. The strongest evidence for continental movement is the study of paleomagnetism. The study of the intensity and orientation of the Earths magnetic field is preserved in the magnetic orientation of certain minerals found in rocks formed throughout geologic time. A study of the ocean floors have demonstrated that the orientation of the earths
Plate tectonics was first suggested as a theory by the geologist Alfred Wegener in 1915 when he proposed the concept of continental drift. Back in the geological past, what is now South America, Africa, Australasia and Antarctica fitted together into a supercontinent known as Gondwanaland; with North America, Europe and Asia fitting into another supercontinent known as Laurasia. (OCR AS/A2 Geology, Mugglestone et al, 2008). These were once believed to be joined to form one major central global landmass known as Pangaea (Introducing Geology, Graham Park). But now due to the global distribution of these major plates it has been proposed by Wegener and his successors that convection currents in the mantle are the cause of the movement of plates.
The underlying ideas that Wilson built his theory on were proposed by Alfred Wegener in 1912 with his Theory of Continental Drift. Tuzo Wilson was able to provide a way to explain how the continents were able to move apart that Wegener could not explain when he had proposed his idea. Scientists had believed that based on the evidence Wegener had provided it did appear that all of the present day continents had somehow been connected together. The way that the coasts of Africa and South America appear to fit together nicely in addition to fossil evidence of large tortoises and other animals being found near the edges of the continents. Alfred could not explain how the huge masses of land could have moved so far.
GCSE Geography Explain the process which leads to the development of one landform at a destructive plate boundary (6 marks). A destructive plate margin is an area where two plates are moving towards each other. The point where the two plates meet is called the subduction zone, where one plate is forced down under the other into the mantle. The subducted plate is cooler and denser than the surrounding mantle and gravity pulls it down. Along the coast of south America, the Nazca plate is moving towards the south American plate.
The Era is made up of six Geologic periods, the Cambrian, Ordovician, Silurian, Devonian, Carboniferous, and the Permian. Much of the plants and animals that exististed and evolved was due to the climate and location of the continents. At the beginning of the Paleozoic period, the continents were far apart, but by the end they were close together and on the way in forming the supercontinent called Pangaea. The land was moving by Plate Tectonics. Four hundred and thirty million years ago there was glaciation; this caused an ice sheet to cover what is now North Africa.
How to predict an volcanic eruption Ground Deformation Ground deformation is the change in shape that happens before during or after a volcanic eruption. This happens because the sides of the volcano change shape because the magma in many ways to measure the change of shape of the volcano, like leveling, triangulation and more recently using continuous Global Positioning System (CGPS). It is also possible to use lakes as large tilt meters. Tilt meters measure the tiny degrees of tilt or slope on land. This is one of the oldest methods of knowing when ground deformation was caused because of rising lava.
Plate Tectonic Theory What is Plate Tectonics? Plate tectonics is the main force that shapes our planet’s surface over a long period of time the study of how the Earth's crust is shaped by geological forces. It relies on the understanding that the crust is divided into large pieces, or plates, that sit on the molten interior of the planet. Currents within the interior cause the plates to move, which causes many different geological events, including earthquakes and the forming of mountains and volcanoes. Understanding how plates move and interact is the main purpose of plate tectonics.
He has critique and formulated historical theories and methodologies on the African contact. To show and prove that there were contacts between the people of the Atlantic world and Africa before the coming of Columbus; researches have based their arguments on two main pillars of evidence. In this essay it is my aim to prove that the West Africans were in the Americas before Columbus and to provide credible data to prove this notion. Historian scholars and researchers such as Ivan Van Sertima, Leo Wiener, and Peter DeRoo among others have pointed to the importance of West Africa in the Early World History. They have produced credible arguments and evidence to support the contact between the Atlantic world and West Africa before 1492.
It wasn’t until Alfred Wegener (1912) presented his theory of continental drift that a reasonable explanation was available. As this theory gained acceptance, although slowly at first, through the 20th century geologists were able to gather evidence to produce maps showing the arrangement of the Earth’s major continents at different periods of its history. These paleo-maps are of great importance for those who study evolution, as the presence and break-up of so called ‘super-continents’ in the past offered an explanation to the disjointed distributions of many terrestrial animals, both extant and fossils. Scientists pre-Wegener postulated that sister clades somehow travelled across large oceans, via land-bridges that are geologically improbable, to explain their presence in both Africa and S. America. What was now a possibility is that these animals were simply on the opposite sides of one continent as it split down the middle to form the Atlantic Ocean.